Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday May 23, 2011 @07:02AM
from the break-out-the-list dept.

theodp writes "Via an FOIA request, the Wall Street Journal acquired records of every private aircraft flight recorded in the FAA's air-traffic management system for 2007 through 2010, using them to build a private jet tracker database. Among the high fliers who found their records unblocked were Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose 767 and Gulfstream reportedly burned an estimated 52,000 gallons of aviation fuel and $430,000 on two round-trips from the U.S. mainland to Tahiti to catch last summer's total eclipse of the sun. A Google spokeswoman confirmed the pair's jaunt, but added that Page and Brin mitigated the greenhouse gas emissions from their aircraft usage by purchasing an even greater amount of carbon offsets. Tech-boom billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban seemed unfazed by the prospect of his past plane movements becoming public: 'I have a plane,' Cuban quipped. 'I bought it so I could use it. Shocking, isn't it?'"

Don't worry, they're trying. I don't know how far it's gotten but I recall hearing something a while back about the TSA and or Homeland Security trying to throw up all kinds of roadblocks to private aviation. One of them was requiring that every passenger on every private plane/jet (even two seater prop driven) have some kind of background check ran on them before every flight. It should be noted that the aviation fuel tax on small aircraft PAYS for a good chunk of the air traffic control system, which they don't massively use. However commercial aviation, which pays no fuel tax, uses the system intensely.

Kidding aside, immediately after the hijackers used COMMERCIAL JETS in the attacks on September 11th, ALL planes were grounded and the very LAST planes allowed back in the air were the ones were not then and have never been used in a terrorist attempt...private airplanes. However, private airplanes are a freedom that some people enjoy, and so therefore, if you believe the government, that freedom ought to be taken away.

And this is why you can do private air flights even if you are an out of touch with reality filthy rich person...

For the price of a commercial 1st class flight you can hop a ride on a charter corporate return flight. Detroit metro to JFK in 50 minutes on a learjet and it took me 15 minutes at the airport without getting groped.

Smart flyers know how to find these kinds of deals and get around the TSA garbage. And the TSA would not dare to try and enforce their abuses at corporate hangars..

They are probably not allowed to flight pool per Google policy. Many businesses have policies regarding key employees traveling together. This is in case of a crash or or other unfortunate event causing the death of the travelers on board. If the policy is written well, they probably aren't supposed to be in the same car train or bus either as those forms of transportation aren't as safe.

If they were concerned about the carbon footprint couldn't they have just bought the offsets and stayed home? Actually the whole idea of carbon offsets is just bullshit. I wonder if they worry about a new era Martin Luther who will show what a mockery their Indulgences really are?

Even more to the point, how exactly is their whereabouts being tracked this way any different than their effort of tracking and selling the activities of every single person who ever uses the internet? Seems perfectly fine to me for them to have their travels publicized and mocked as appropriate.

Carbon offsets are not real. I repeat, carbon offsets and carbon credits are NOT real. It's the equivalent of purchasing organic foods because you want to help nature.

How exactly do you come to that conclusion? Nevermind the fact that, as far as I am aware, purchasing organic was never about helping nature and was only about "eating healthier", if I put, say, 10 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, what does it matter if I personally do something which will pull 10 tons of CO2 out or if I pay someone else to do it on my behalf?

If that's not how it works, then that is a problem with the implementation, not the concept.

Out of all the posts I've seen that say "carbon offsets are not real" (and I'll admit, the ones I've seen are few and far between, so maybe I've missed this next part), I've never a post explaining why they are not real.

The #1 reason carbon offsets are likely not real is the massive amount of fraud involved in the "business".

There are many documented cases of sales of "carbon offsets" where nothing at all is done, or the same tree is "planted" for 50 different offsets. In addition, there is the whole point you mention that even if the seller does something, does it really "offset" the original carbon dioxide release?

Last, it's possible to sell carbon offsets just because you don't pollute as much as you are legally allowe

Ageer, this represents a serious breach of privacy. What would you think if your car location data would be publicly available? So anyone can basically know when/where you went? I have no problem if this you authorize to publish your data but not like this.

Do you know, in my state at least, if we're driving and you signal to get into my lane, I'm not required to do anything? Likewise, if you're entering the highway from an on ramp, the onus is on you to merge in - nobody is required to "let" you in? There's no requirement or expectation of common courtesy... but you find a lot of people willing to grant it anyway.

So, while what you wrote may be true, while there's no expectation of privacy, it doesn't mean you can't grant it to people, and just like I will

These are two people who spend a lot of time proclaiming that we should reduce our carbon footprint. This is in the same category of hypocrisy as the guy who proclaims that sex outside of marriage is wrong and is then caught sleeping with his secretary. If your position is that AGW is such a major problem as to justify spending trillions of dollars of other people's money to mitigate it, then you should not be jetting off to some island to view a solar eclipse.
This type of behavior on the part of AGW prop

Or perhaps they are better at math than you are. One 767 more or less won't make any significant difference in the amount of CO2 emitted.

One car that is non-electric won't. One large house, or any of the other things that proponents of severe anti-global-warming measures want to limit, won't either. The usage by a single individual isn't going to have much overall effect on global warming whether it's a plane or whether it's something us peons without private planes use.

They are filthy rich, they can buy anything that is for sale in this world, and, unfortunately, that includes pretty much everything including justice, political influence,...

The distorted power they have in the society should be balanced by a distorted amount of scrutiny. We are doing already so little of that nowadays that even something as insignificant as what the WSJ is valuable.

this is a private person doing something privately with their earned fortune

Air space is a limited public good, and using it opens you to public inspection. It's the air space above MY lawn you are using. Even if the info was not available before, there's nothing immoral in releasing it, and the expectation for privacy is unreasonable in the context. You can make use your earned fortune in the privacy of your own property just fine.

Perhaps the joke is that in 3 years of filthy rich private aircraft travel they only found one filthy rich person using their plane to go to a tropical island for a holiday. Clearly all the other private aircraft owners are only using them for humanitarian aid.

Perhaps the joke is that in 3 years of filthy rich private aircraft travel they only found one filthy rich person using their plane to go to a tropical island for a holiday. Clearly all the other private aircraft owners are only using them for humanitarian aid.

How is it any more wrong than what you are doing? Your computer is consuming precious energy and destroying the planet. You probably have the lights on, where do you think the energy for that is coming from? Did you walk to work? If not, then you probably used fuel on your way in. Have you ever gone on vacation, how did you get there? do you own anything made out of wood? a tree was chopped down to make that. how much energy was expended to make your house? your car? your computer? your various other toys?

What, the point that publishing names and data is the same as publishing data? He makes a huge leap. It's one thing to say "9 out of 10 teenagers are having sex right this second, mostly in cars." and another to say "Mary is having sex right now in a volkswagen behind a Taco Bell". To equate Google's privacy violations with this is counter-productive as anybody can say "the data has been scrubbed, it's totally different. Therefore you have nothing to complain about." He does himself an injustice by implying

... but if Google's founders can't fly to Tahiti to watch an astronomical event, then who can?

Google (as a company) is doing quite a lot for the development and implementation of sustainable energy, and the guys (as private persons) even seem to plant some trees (or something) to compensate for the fuel they burn.

I think that if you want to accuse Google of something evil, it has to be on the privacy front, not the pollution part. So, I think it's reasonable to be apologetic.

They bought their indulgences (carbon credits) from The Church of Global Warming. Their sins are forgiven.

Look, stupid new religions based on politics and pseudo-half-science I can abide, but I won't tolerate hypocrisy: if the Google boys put sufficient money in the collection plate, they should be cut sufficient slack. The consequences of indiscretion, today as in the Middle Ages, should only be for the poor...

So who of us would not fly every now and then on a private plane in order to travel through the world? Isn't this also the case for many polititians, especially "important" ones?Honestly, I would do it.

... summed it up brilliantly. This is like someone discovering Google Maps for the first time and spying on the backyards of the wealthy. Nothing of real interest here except the obvious, "Why is the WSJ so interested in tracking private citizens given the fact that it was FREAKING out over 'privacy' issues, like *gasp* ad companies track people, and the fact that it is conservative, and isn't that all about personal freedom, 'don't take mah gun, git yer camera outta my backyard'?"

And analyzing flight plans of planes that report it to a government entity is no more an invasion of privacy than my mortgage info and home address being a matter of public record.

And guess what, newspapers investigate. That's what they do. Sometimes they find interesting stuff. Sometimes they'll see that an environmentalist like Al Gore is using the energy of 5 households for ambient lighting on his estate. Isn't showing hypocrisy like

"A Google spokeswoman confirmed the pair's jaunt, but added that Page and Brin mitigated the greenhouse gas emissions from their aircraft usage by purchasing an even greater amount of carbon offsets."

I lost respect for them because they subscribe to ManBearPig's farcical religion that tells them they can cleanse themselves of their environmental sins if they purchase carbon indulgences. The whole notion of carbon indulgences is fucking retarded. It's not as if their jet left a trail of elemental carbon floating in the atmosphere for all eternity. It likely produced some carbon-containing pollutants - but guess what also does... BREATHING! Every living organism contains carbon, so the idea of somehow trying to "offset" it is nonsense. They probably bought their indulgences from one of those companies that burns down forests in South America just so they can have some land to plant trees on to assuage the self-inflicted angst and guilt of rich white liberal Americans.

While I agree that props go to Mark Cuban and that carbon offsets are ludicrous, I didn't really lose respect for Page and Brin. They didn't make the statement personally, a Google spokeswoman did, and a Google spokeswoman wouldn't dare be blunt about something like this. Besides, I'm sure Page and Brin have been harassed by green nuts in the past. Their wealth and fame would make them irresistible targets to all sorts of nut-jobs. If they can't use a small part of their vast fortune to keep nut-jobs from h

Of course breathing take carbon sequestered int he earth and vents it into the atmosphere. Where do you think you get the carbon you breathe out in the form of carbon dioxide? You eat it. Where do you think your food get it? Sources sequestered in the earth.

Are you actually this stupid, or are you trolling? The carbon in food comes from the air. So does the Nitrogen actually, but it gets fixed into the soil by other plants so that the Nitrogen-using plants can take it up. (coevolution...) If you run your vehicle on biofuels then that can be true of it as well, but that's not what we're talking about here. Since planes running on bio is a technology in its infancy you're comparing a carbon-neutral activity (breathing) with a carbon-positive one (pumping oil, tu

So you only spend your money on things that make your feel terrible about yourself?

Pretty much everything I spend my "disposable income" on (i.e. not paying the bills...) is stuff that makes me feel good or feel good about myself. Or that I think will make others feed good. Actually pretty much everything I do is attempts to make myself feel good or to allow me to do other things that make me feel good.

Mr. Cuban, I will probably never even desire my own jet, and I feel like that if you are flying you really should use commercial. But I appreciate the fact that you call it like you see it. I'm glad to see you just own it and go with it.

I'm not as big a fan of the "carbon credits." I understand that these credits go towards promoting carbon reduction, but the system pretty much dictates "I'm rich, so I can buy my morality. See, when you have enough money, you don't need to reduce usage. You just pay others to clean up for you."

"I'm rich, so I can buy my morality. See, when you have enough money, you don't need to reduce usage. You just pay others to clean up for you."

You are suggesting that it is immoral to burn fuel. Or, rather, to burn fuel for a purpose that you (or somebody?) doesn't approve of, or doesn't deem important enough.

It isn't. You're free to disapprove of it, and you're free to tell yourself that Google's founders are going to murder the planet because they flew to Tahiti, but that's got nothing to do with morality.

Burning oil creates pollution. There is no getting away from that, burning stuff produces waste. Not just CO2, but soot as well.

Burning oil needlessly has a negative affect on everyone and cannot be morally justified. The question is at what point is the cut-off? Most of us burn oil for pleasure travelling and find that acceptable, but that doesn't mean that rich individuals should have license to pollute as much as they like and not feel guilty.

"I'm rich, so I can buy my morality. See, when you have enough money, you don't need to reduce usage. You just pay others to clean up for you."

I think a jet for the rich is like a car for the middle class.

You can't really suggest they are killing the planet without being a hypocrite unless you use public transportation for everything.

Yeah, public transportation doesn't work well for everyone's schedules, but neither does commercial aviation for corporations. If a CEO wants to be in Tahiti, Korea, D.C., or NYC in a matter of hours - commercial might not work.

No. He is suggesting that people like Sergey Brin and Larry Page believe it to be immoral to burn fuel, and so feel compelled to purchase carbon credits to absolve their sins and remove their own guilt.

You are suggesting that it is immoral to burn fuel. Or, rather, to burn fuel for a purpose that you (or somebody?) doesn't approve of, or doesn't deem important enough.

It isn't. You're free to disapprove of it, and you're free to tell yourself that Google's founders are going to murder the planet because they flew to Tahiti, but that's got nothing to do with morality.

There's a large and increasing body evidence that burning large amounts of fossil fuel is warming the planet, which in turn will cause oceans

Not really. Airliners are not the gas hogs that people think. A modern airliners gets about the same passenger mileage as an economy car. Plus that mileage is also spread over cargo as well. Now a private 767 is going to burn as much fuel a regular 767 but a 767 airliner caries around 250 to 300 people. And the manufactures are all about better fuel economy because it means more money. So if your bosses are flying on an airliner than it isn't an issue. It is sort of like the Ford Excursion. It is a huge fue

This reminds me of what the church used to do, which was sell indulgences to the rich so they didn't have to pray or spend as much time earning forgiveness. Everyone else had to pay the full penance. It was one of the reasons Martin Luther started the protestant revolution.

Except this time it's not the church, but some business selling forgiveness in the eyes of the public. Who knows what the money is actually used for.

Well, that's exactly how it should go. Given a certain level of wealth division in a society, the rich should be forced to pay their (higher) externalities. I consume more of nature's limited resources, you consume less, but we are created equal so I pay you for the privilege. The price of a certain resource caries important information into the market, and it allows the market to allocate it efficiently.If we agree the capacity of the ecosphere to absorb carbon dioxide is limited, with potential disastrous effects when exceeded, then we need to efficiently make use of the available margin. A method to accomplish that is via carbon caps or taxes, as opposed to 'just own it and go with it' method you propose, i.e a land-grab (resource-grab) by those in the best position to grab it (having the largest SUV, private jet, yacht etc.) despite having a no more legitimate claim on said resource than the average bushman or eskimo.

They're not archiving those aircraft movements; the pilots must register their flight plans with the FAA, and such registrations are a matter of public record. The FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, is a public agency.

Note that the flight plans in question could be associated with Messrs. Brin and Page because they own the plane, which is a known fact, not because the FAA keeps track of who goes where in their own private transport.

How about some journalist uses this FOIA to get logs of commercial flights? And with that I mean passenger logs? When you fly within, to, or from the US, almost anything they know about you is given to the US government. Names, passport numbers, credit card details, hotel details, etc. etc. Everything. This is logged somewhere for sure - otherwise the exercise is quite useless. A single piece of information doesn't tell much; many pieces of information allow for data mining. Who traveled where? Travel compa

I know these guys are rich, but this seems crazy. They are using their own private vehicles.

If the government allows this, what next? Listing every license plate through all the toll booths? What about the release of all the vehicular movement from the tracking devices in lower Manhattan? Private citizens should have some right not to be publicly tracked.

What about GPS tracking of cars for mileage taxation. If that ever happens, why shouldn't that data be released just like the airplane data.

What about GPS tracking of cars for mileage taxation. If that ever happens, why shouldn't that data be released just like the airplane data.

That is a very good question and part of the reason that I don't see any good reason for GPS tracking of cars, for any reason (except in special cases with a warrant). Perhaps it has never occured to you that the goal of those proposals is GPS tracking of cars, not the mileage taxation. The mileage taxation is just an excuse to install GPS tracking in all vehicles.

Okay, maybe not a screeching halt, but it'd get the wind knocked out of it (again). In the 60s, you could buy plane for a little more than a car cost; now a new 2-seat trainer will set you back at least $110k. Dozens of aviation companies sprung up from the 40s to the 60s, and even in 1980 we still had over 800,000 pilots in the US; today that number is under 600,000 [wikipedia.org].

I spoke to a guy a few weeks ago who learned to fly in the late 70s and rented most of the planes he flew for $30-ish an hour. I just finished my private pilot cert and the cheapest plane around here (Lehigh Valley, PA) is about $86/hr, +$30 with the instructor. Aviation gas is about $6/gallon.

Small airports and flight schools don't make a lot of money teaching guys like me on two- or four-seat trainers, just like airplane companies don't make a lot of money selling them (Cessna even stopped production for a decade or so in the 80s). One of the few remaining markets with any margins left is business jets. I get that journalists can stir up populist outrage by talking about jaunts to Tahiti, but what would you rather rich people do with their money? Keep it? Spoil their kids with it? They're keeping pilots and airport attendants in their jobs, and if you're upset about the amount of fuel burned for such a frivolous adventure, well, the only way we're going to get better fuels and more efficient engines is if the people making them have money to invest in those things.

$30 in 1978 dollars is $103 in 2011 dollars, so in reality you're paying significantly LESS than what he was if you're paying $86/hr.

The costs of new aircraft have increased at greater than the rate of inflation (a 172K in 1969 cost about $13,000 - or $86,000 in 2011 dollars, a modern C172 is significantly more even after you take into account the much higher equipment level a modern C172 has). But even then $13,000 was significantly more expensive than a car unless you're talking of a high end luxury Mercedes Benz. In the 1960s the planes available for "little more than the cost of a car" would be older, used aircraft - just like today.

A lot of the increase in costs for making planes came from the removal of certain tax breaks, IIRC. Also we can probably blame liability lawyers, too. Cessna actually restarted production because of the limitation put in to how long they were liable for an airframe to 18 years, instead of forever as it was before. (Cessna were getting sued when pilots did things like run out of fuel, or fly VFR into IMC and other things not remotely their fault).

If you think it's expensive in the US, then you should come over here some time. I spend $86/hr in *fuel alone* in my own aircraft, and it's only got an O-320 engine! Then I have to pay for insurance, oil, maintenance, repairs on top of that!

So you promote private jets because it provides the likes of you with employment ? Oh, the fallacy of "job creation".How about if keep your pay-check but instead of piloting you can mow some rich dude's lawn, and the copious resources wasted for giving him an incremental comfort over business class be employed for, you know, vaccines or irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa ?

You're exactly right, but the point of the comparison was not that aviation is totally unaffordable today (it isn't - I'm hardly wealthy and I could afford my private cert, though more than that would hurt the bank...) but that it's a lot less affordable than it was, and that there are fewer people in it -- so it's important to the industry and to aviation technology that somebody out there is still making money.

Does this seem a bit hypocritical (at least perceived). I really don't care what they do with their money but this seems counter to their support of Anthropomorphic Global Warming. Oh sure they bought some carbon credits, but since the credits are a traded commodity, their extravagance resulted in higher prices for others seeking the same credits (supply-demand curve). Therefore, since others may not have purchased those credits due to the higher price, no overall benefit was realized. It seems to me tha

#1: the COSTS of fossil fuel use is socialized. that we all suffer for the burning of fossil fuels. while true, it's not a matter of jet exhaust being piped directly into your bedroom, it is much more abstract and complicated, and not a matter for great anger, unless you are a hysterical person

#2: that there is hypocrisy with the upper middle class and upper classes. they often are the greatest proponents of green living, while paradoxically being the greatest creators of pollution with their lifestyles. ag

We can track their private aircraft locations. Great. Now if we can only track their email correspondences, web searches, cell phone locations and browsing history we can start to know as much about them as they know about us peasants.

I work in aviation and privacy is a big concern for some of our customers. Sometimes its for security concerns (the richer you are, the more people who want to make a mask with your face) and other times its for PR reasons (it doesn't look good when a company fires a few thousand employees in the name of cutting costs and then turns around and picks up a few new G550s - even though the new aircraft will save them money in the long run).

What these guys usually do is operate under a pseudonym. I don't know the full mechanics of it, but we regularly have customers with bogus names operating under bogus corporations. They get paint schemes totally devoid of any company logos or color schemes and doing a tail number search yields meaningless results. We know who they are, but on lookers, like in this case, will be totally in the dark.

Famous people usually don't care. While most celebrities can't even afford to look at a private jet, those that can often get their names painted all over the side of their aircraft as if saying 'look at the size of my penis!' The point being, if they want to be private, they can, but it seems these guys just don't care.

Now that isn't to say that they should have to go out of their way to maintain privacy. The FAA logs and keeps way too much information on these guys to the point it is downright scary. Of course, the relative safety of air travel has a lot to do with the strict controls of the FAA, but none the less, they need to be more concerned with privacy - if not for the sake of the VIPs, then for the safety of the couple dozen technicians and crew members maintaining and operating the aircraft.

'I have a plane,' Cuban quipped. 'I bought it so I could use it. Shocking, isn't it?'

That was just awesome. As far as google goes they have a right to do whatever they want but don't at the same time expect anyone to think Google is somehow different or less 'evil' than any other large corporation. How rediculous the following 60 minutes piece seems today.

What paranoia! How many terrorists do you think there actually are, and why would they waste their time on plotting to "off" someone who my grandma probably hasn't even heard of?
It's this sort of thinking that, for example, allows governments to implement the ban on liquids in airplanes, and not rescind it even in the face of evidence.
Sorry, but can we think before knee-jerking* terrorism into the debate?
* (I think I just verbed a noun, by the way)...
.

Right, so should we ban planes, or databases? Well, databases aren't that dangerous, you can't blow up towers in major cities with a database (friends who work with Oracle DBs may object to that, however).

So, we'll state that planes are bad because tewowiztz can use them to kill people. So, lets ban them! Then trains will be the next logical target. Ban those. Then boats, ban ban ban! Then trucks, ban. Then cars, ban. Then anywhere people ride their bikes, ban those too. Then people will be forced

Or, you know, we could move beyond this petty carbon offset nonsense. It's just another guilt-driven cash cow where modern day hippies brow-beat each other into subsidizing carbon-negative companies that would fail without the handouts. It's large-scale corporate welfare.

You want people to reduce their environmental impact ? Forget the tree planting outfits, how about public transit options that don't royally suck. How about assassinating the OPEC cartel leaders and their immediate heirs. How about for

There are plenty of people in the Western world who have the dedication to save energy in their daily lives. You just don't hear about them in the media because it's really not all that interesting to make a story about how someone is air drying clothes instead of using the dryer or buying a fuel efficient car instead of a gas guzzler because of their personal insecurities.

Also keep in mind that the "Western world" is not just the United States, but also includes Europe and other countries as well. Accordi

There are plenty of people in the Western world who have the dedication to save energy in their daily lives.

There are not enough such people to compensate for those who are wasting energy. No wide-scale environmental problem has been solved by individuals deciding to live in an environmentally friendly fashion. They have been solved through large policy changes involving carrots and sticks on society at large.

No it isn't. Here's your thought experiment: What would happen if every animal on the planet ceased breathing, all at the same time? (for "every animal" use "every non-photosynthesizing organism"). What would happen to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? To the concentration of O2?

See? Breathing, not carbon neutral. Your fuel source may be renewable, but that's not necessarily the same thing as 'neutral'.

---The Internet: Keeping pedants busy since 1989. Or '62. Or '69. Heck, when was tha

How does giving someone some money erase the hundreds of thousands of jet fuel burned exactly?

Right, so you buy some carbon allowance from some poor shlub from Kenya who wouldn't have emitted any CO2 if he tried. Well, he might work hard enough to own a donkey, which could then fart some... but that's neither here nor there. It's a sham. If you're concerned about the environment, it pains you to turn on the car, let alone fly on some weekend getaway halfway across the globe.